The question was so startling, from his own daughter, that Pierson took
refuge in an attempt at wit. "I should like notice of that question,
Nollie, as they say in Parliament."

"That means you don't."

Pierson flushed. "We're fallible enough; but, don't get such ideas into
your head, my child. There's a lot of rebellious talk and writing in
these days...."

Noel clasped her hands behind her head. "I think," she said, looking
straight before her, and speaking to the air, "that Christianity is what
you do, not what you think or say. And I don't believe people can be
Christians when they act like others--I mean, when they join together to
judge and hurt people."

Pierson rose and paced the room. "You have not seen enough of life to
talk like that," he said. But Noel went on:

"One of the men in her hospital told Gratian about the treatment of
conscientious objectors--it was horrible. Why do they treat them like
that, just because they disagree? Captain Fort says it's fear which
makes people bullies. But how can it be fear when they're hundreds to
one? He says man has domesticated his animals but has never succeeded in
domesticating himself. Man must be a wild beast, you know, or the world
couldn't be so awfully brutal. I don't see much difference between being
brutal for good reasons, and being brutal for bad ones."

Pierson looked down at her with a troubled smile. There was something
fantastic to him in this sudden philosophising by one whom he had
watched grow up from a tiny thing. Out of the mouths of babes and
sucklings--sometimes! But then the young generation was always something
of a sealed book to him; his sensitive shyness, and, still more, his
cloth, placed a sort of invisible barrier between him and the hearts of
others, especially the young. There were so many things of which he was
compelled to disapprove, or which at least he couldn't discuss. And they
knew it too well. Until these last few months he had never realised that
his own daughters had remained as undiscovered by him as the interior of
Brazil. And now that he perceived this, he was bewildered, yet could not
imagine how to get on terms with them.

And he stood looking at Noel, intensely puzzled, suspecting nothing of
the hard fact which was altering her--vaguely jealous, anxious, pained.
And when she had gone up to bed, he roamed up and down the room a long
time, thinking. He longed for a friend to confide in, and consult; but
he knew no o